15 May The 2016 idea: roadtripping and filmmaking

Mexico to Costa Rica  (december 2016 to february 2017) – The idea
Steven and I share a lot of dreams and try to incorporate them into our daily lives as often as we can. Every year, before we start our 8 months leg in travel we sit together, share our ideas and dreams for that travel leg: where do we want to go, do we go in the van, what do we want to work on, what do we want to learn and most important: what do we want to give back when we travel and to whom? We put that on a poster which we have called our lifestyle design poster. One of those ideas on this poster has been to tell the story of living a different kind of life. To make a film about making conscious choices what to do with our time, what to spend it on, how to work, on what to work, where to work from, where to live, how to live etc. We are not film makers and don’t have any experience in this field, so this dream has been on our poster for years. Until we met Marnix and Martijn. Two filmmakers.

Crowdfunding campaign on Cinecrowd.com (2016).

Filmmaking and crowdfunding
Long story short: we met Marnix and Martijne while in the Netherlands in the summer of 2016, we invited them over to our house-sitting apartment in the Dutch city of Nijmegen (see pic) and met for the first time as a ‘filming crew‘. They lóved to tell this story and bring a vision into the world. We invited them to travel with us from Mexico to Costa Rica. Combining the story of the actual roadtrip with a baby, who will be for the first time ‘on the road‘ and for her this path will not unbeaten, it will be her ‘normal‘, while also interviewing people we meet along the way who have decided to take a different exit, to live ‘off the beaten track‘ and create their own normal. The two young filmmakers loved the narrative and we jointly started an online crowdfund campaign for this film. Within a 45 days we gathered 21.000 euros to make this film. We bought a second, 1980 VW van in Mexico, the filmmakers traveled to Mexico and started filming in Mexico on december 5th 2016. The idea was to travel together in the two vans to Costa Rica and visit a variety of living communities and introduce ourselves to many different ‘normals‘, while filming the whole process.

We had to prepare for the roadtrip: we had the dream to make this trip not in one antique VW bus, but in two. Part of the crowdfund budget for the film was destined to buying a second VW van for the filmmakers to travel in. This van needed to be mechanically prepped and also, several adjustments had to be made to the interior to bring us comfortably to our destination in Costa Rica: beds and a vault plus camping equipment had to be found, bought or made in Mexico. A challenge in itself! Then, we would not only be travelling with four adults but also with a 13 month old baby. What to bring to keep her safe and comfortable? We wrote about this as well in the post here.